The third-generation Philips Hue White and Color Ambiance A19 Starter Kit is costly, but remains the ultimate way to get started with smart lighting in your home.

Philips set the bar high for smart lightingwith its original Hue Connected Bulb. Now in its third generation, the White and Color Ambiance A19 Starter Kit ($199.95) raises it even higher, thanks to Apple Homekit compatibility, enhanced brightness and color consistency, and a retooled app experience. It still costs a pretty penny, but you get better bang for your buck as Philips has improved the longevity of each bulb. With class-leading features and a robust third-party ecosystem, the White and Color Ambiance package is a great way to get started with smart lighting, and our Editors' Choice.

New and Improved

The latest Hue bulbs aren't so much about innovation as refinement. Design-wise, there isn't anything different from the original Hue lights—they're still the same shape and size. Aside from the words "Hue White and Color" at the base of the bulb, you'd be hard pressed to tell these apart from first-gen models.

So what's different? For starters, the included Hue Bridge features an upgraded processor with more than 500 times the memory and is now square. This lets it run multiple applications like the Hue system and Apple HomeKit at the same time, whereas the original (round) bridge was really only designed with the lights in mind.

The bulbs themselves are also brighter. Philips has increased lumen output from 600 to 800 lumens, which is equivalent to a jump from 40W to about 60W. Each bulb is also estimated to last 25,000 hours or 22 years, up from the 15-year estimate for the original. And in terms of color, the new bulbs have a richer gamut, with special attention paid to the blues and greens.

I plugged two bulbs into my living room and one in my bedside lamp for testing. At night, I was pleased that I didn't have to strain my eyes to read a book or write in a journal thanks to the adjustable brightness levels. As for colors, the range is truly impressive. You can choose anything from light pastels to intensely vivid (bordering on garish) hues. True to Philips' claims, the blues and greens are both rich and bright. I tried out the preset Artic Aurora Scene, which is full of shades like mint, teal, sea foam, and sky blue. Even with a red accent wall, my living room was thoroughly transformed into what felt like an undersea paradise. Likewise, the bulbs were able to produce a darker, murkier shade of green that mimicked deep space (or at least what I imagine deep space to look like) quite well.

Cost-wise, individual bulbs are now slightly less expensive at $50 apiece, instead of $60. That's still asking a lot if you're looking to outfit your entire home, or even an apartment. Thankfully, Philips now offers a more diverse lighting portfolio so you don't have to empty your entire bank account. The Hue White Ambiance bulbs, which offer the full spectrum of white light, are $30 per bulb, or $129.99 for a starter kit. Alternatively, if you don't care about having multiple shades of white and just want the bare basics, you can get the Hue White bulbs at a relatively affordable $14.99 per bulb, or $69.99 for a starter kit.

The setup process is simple. First, you screw in your bulbs into the fixtures you want and switch them on. Then you connect the bridge to your router via Ethernet, download the Philips Hue app to your Android or iOS device, and follow the on-screen instructions to identify the individual bulbs and group them into rooms. Because the Hue bulbs connect to the bridge via Wi-Fi, you can control them even when you're not at home—something you can't do with Bluetooth-only bulbs like the TikTeck Smart LED.

Streamlined Experience

The ability to personalize not only the color and intensity, but also to recreate lighting scenes from your photos, was a major draw for the original Hue bulbs. The only caveat was that the original Philips Hue app wasn't the most intuitive to use.

So it's a good thing Philips has created a new Hue app that addresses many of the problems we had with the original. First off is a more streamlined design. You no longer have to rotate your smartphone to access the full color gradient for individual bulbs. The layout has also been tweaked so there's a bit less sifting through menus to access the features you want. For instance, you can now find the gradient for colors, whites (cool or warm), and preset lighting recipes all on the same page.

Grouping lights by room is also more intuitive. Previously, you had to drag individual bulbs together to create a room. But they'd still be listed individually under the Lights tab, which is confusing when you have a lot of bulbs. The new app does away with that approach. Instead of focusing on bulbs, it centers on rooms. Once you've created groups, you can easily adjust brightness and color for an entire room from the main menu. You can still customize each bulb individually—you just have to tap on the room name.

The Scenes feature is easier to use as well. You can find the Scenes tab once you tap on the name of an individual room. There are a number of presets and lighting recipes, including the aforementioned Arctic Aurora, Energize, Read, Relax, and Spring Blossom, among others. Scenes like Spring Blossom are based on actual pictures, while Energize and Read are optimized white lighting for specific moods or tasks. Energize is a cooler, blue-tone white light, while Relax utilizes a warmer, yellow tone.

To select a Scene, tap on the bubble with the Scene photo and your lights will automatically match that color scheme. If you want to edit it, hit the pencil icon. That will take you to a larger version of the same image, where you can select a specific area you want to recreate. The app will then assign the colors to each bulb, and you can adjust brightness using the slider at the bottom of the screen. You can easily upload your own photos as well. For example, I uploaded a photo of my vacation to Cozumel, Mexico, and the app automatically adjusted my living room lights to soft shades of teal and sand to recreate the lighting on the beach.

Even with these improvements, the Hue app isn't perfect. Setting Routines is a little more roundabout than it needs to be. There are presets for waking up, going to bed, and you can enable location services so that lights turn on and off based on where you are. These are simple enough, but it's less intuitive to create a custom schedule. Setting a start time, brightness, color, and days of the week is straightforward, but it's frustrating that you can only program an on or off time in a single routine, so you essentially need to create the same Routine twice (once to turn lights on, and once to turn them off).

Lastly, the Settings menu is where you can add extra lights, accessories, and even widgets for the Apple Watch. The latter are basically shortcuts on the watch to your favorite settings, so you don't have to pull out your phone. I was surprised by how much fun I had with these—especially since I could quickly change the living room lights to my favorite color whenever I won a dispute with my roommate. (Immature, yes, but an entertaining use of technology.)

Throw a Party With Third-Party Apps

Philips also has a big leg up on the competition with 400 unique third-party apps in its Hue ecosystem. Some are fairly practical, but most center around syncing your lights to music, movies, or television shows. Others, like Lightbow, offer you more options for presets and color palettes. None of these are necessary, but they enable you to do more than the official app alone.

Keep in mind that many of these third-party apps cost a few extra dollars. I tried the free SyFy Sync app, which uses your phone's microphone while you're watching certain SyFy shows to match your lights to what's happening on screen. Initially I was skeptical, but it worked pretty well for season one of The Expanse—even if I ended up focusing more on how well the lighting fit each scene than the actual plot.

You can find these apps in either the Apple App Store or Google Play, but I'd recommend rifling through the Explore tab in the Hue app. There's a handy, curated list of third-party apps and all compatible platforms, including Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, Bosch, Google Home, IFTTT, Logitech, Nest, and SmartThings.

I tested the Hue lights with Amazon Alexa and Apple HomeKit. With Alexa, you just download the Philips Hue skill in the (Alexa) app itself. You can then create groups and control your lights through voice commands such as, "Alexa, dim living room lights to 50 percent" on your Amazon Echo. You can do the same with Siri and Apple HomeKit, right from your iPhone. There's a simple "HomeKit & Siri" menu in the Hue app, and you don't actually have to do anything extra to set things up. The only caveat is that you can't edit HomeKit settings unless you're on the same Wi-Fi network.

The Best Smart Bulbs Money Can Buy

Hue's only real limitation is the depth of your pockets. At $200 for the White and Color Ambiance A19 Starter Kit and $50 per additional bulb, it's still quite expensive for the average consumer. This is especially true if you want smart lighting in every room of your home. But as mentioned, you can spend far less by adding a mix of Hue White bulbs, which are less expensive and offer similar functionality, minus the color. (And let's be honest, most rooms don't need to light up like a club.)

If you want to go the more economical route, the C by GE Starter Pack is about a quarter of the price, doesn't require a hub, and comes with four bulbs—one more than you get here. You can't set routines and there's no Wi-Fi support, so you can only control your bulbs when you're home, but you can't really beat the price.

If price isn't an issue, however, the Hue White and Color Ambiance are the smart bulbs we recommend. They're easy to install, customize, control remotely, and they integrate with many other devices and services you probably already use. Despite the intimidating start-up cost, they are shining examples of what smart bulbs should be, and our Editors' Choice.

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About the Author

Victoria Song is the wearables and smart home analyst at PCMag. Since graduating from Temple University?s Japan Campus in 2010, she's been found reporting and editing in every corner of the newsroom at The ACCJ Journal, The Japan News, and New York bureau of The Yomiuri Shimbun. In her spare time, she bankrupts herself going to theater, buying expa... See Full Bio

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